The present invention relates to a device and method for generating an operating procedure manual. More specifically, the present invention relates to a device and method for generating an operating procedure manual for software which includes captured images of screens displayed by the software.
Operating procedure manuals are created for software in many instances by documenting the operating procedure of the software using captured images of screens displayed by the software. This technique is used when creating software manuals, test procedures, and descriptions of steps which are reproduced to share knowledge with a team or report problems to a developer.
However, operating procedure manuals for software require a great deal of time and effort when created by hand. Also, the format of the manual and the degree of detail differ depending on the author of the operating procedure manual for the software.
The automatic generation of operating procedure manuals for software by computer has been desired, and devices for automatically generating operating procedure manuals are known in the art.
In one known prior art, a system for generating an operating procedure manual for Web applications has been used which includes: means for accessing a screen of a Web application from a Web application server indicated by a route URL when the user has designated a route URL; means for calling screen analysis processing using the accessed screen as an argument; means for analyzing the HTML of the screen to be analyzed in the screen analysis processing, for acquiring information on all links and forms present on the screen, and for registering the information in a screen information storage unit; means for capturing the image to be analyzed, for converting the screen into an image file, and for storing the image file in a screen image storage unit; and means for accessing or transmitting all of the obtained links and forms, and for performing a screen transition.
In another known prior art, a device for automatically generating an operating procedure manual is used in which application display screen data is acquired each time an operation event occurs in the application, and the data is associated with numbers indicating the operating sequence and transition level and then stored. When a user instructs the device to generate a manual for normal operations, screens of normal transition are automatically selected and used in the manual. Transition screens of abnormal operations can also be selected. In addition, the user can manually select screens to be used in the operating procedure manual.
Programs have also been developed which can be used when operating procedure manuals are automatically generated for software.
In another known prior art, capture software for the creation of a manual has been used in which captured images are taken and stored using tabs, and then subsequently edited.
In another known prior art, a support tool for creating test cases is able to create an operating log in which the operations performed using the user interface (UI) of an application during a test are stored in files as text.